Actors Tricia Helfer and Brian Van Holt talk about their new series, Ascension while appearing at a meeting of the Television Critics Association in Beverly Hills, California.Frederick M. Brown
/ Getty Images

Actress Tricia Helfer started out as a model but now stars in the new sci-fi series Ascension slated to debut in November.Syfy
/ Chris Haston/Syfy

Tricia Helfer and co-star Brian Van Holt star in Ascension, a sci-fi series set to debut in November.Syfy
/ Chris Haston/Syfy

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Tricia Helfer has come a long way from Donalda, Alta., pop. 259. After a modelling career walking the runway for such international designers as Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, John Galliano and Christian Dior, among others, she played Cylon Number Six for five years in the cult space opera Battlestar Galactica, from 2004-’09.

She also acted in the short-lived Toronto-based drama The Firm and last year’s chase thriller Killer Women, and now she’s returning to her science-fiction origins in the new, Canadian-produced space opera Ascension, which will make its bow on CBC and the U.S. cable channel Syfy in November.

Ascension revolves around a covert U.S. government project in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, to send 600 people on a 100-year mission to populate a new world.

The story picks up 50 years into their journey with an unexplained murder that causes the ship’s inhabitants to question their original mission.

Ascension was created by Smallville writer and story editor Philip Levens and is being produced by Lionsgate’s B.C.-based Sea To Sky Entertainment, in association with Los Angeles-based Blumhouse Productions, makers of the cult hit film Paranormal Activity. Ascension will be based in Montreal for the duration of its production.

Helfer confessed her life has been a whirlwind of late, in a private conversation with Postmedia News following a press session for Los Angeles-based media at the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association. Within the day, she would be winging her way back to Montreal, and Ascension’s set.

“I lived Battlestar Galactica through filming it, which is a different experience from watching it,” Helfer recalled quietly. “Seeing all the episodes later, intermingled with the memories of being on set, is a strange way to relive something. We really did become a family, and that doesn’t happen all the time.”

Vancouver was Helfer’s home for six years. She lives in Los Angeles now, but divides her time between the U.S. and Canada.

Battlestar Galactica hit a popular nerve in sudden and unexpected ways. Its sprawling tale of terrorism, religious extremism and a desperate race for survival followed close in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. The timing was coincidence, but something about it clicked.

“When you’re making a show you never know what’s going to hit and what isn’t,” Helfer said. “There are so many factors that go into it. You can only hope that what you’re doing says something about what’s going on in society at the time. The fact that it’s still living on, that I’m being approached even now by people who are experiencing it for the first time, shows just what an effect it had. It doesn’t feel like it was that far ago.”

Helfer’s early career focused on modelling. She hosted Canada’s Next Top Model, and appeared in ad campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Versace and Giorgio Armani, among others. The jump from supermodelling to science-fiction seems like a time warp, but Helfer doesn’t see it that way. She resisted being typecast after Battlestar Galactica, despite being offered a steady stream of what she called “low-budget, low-quality stories.”

It can be a mistake to take anything that comes, simply because of a need to keep working, Helfer said.

“The fun part of being an actor is that you can play all sorts of different roles. It‘s infinite. So I made a conscious effort to go out there and take chances. I made a conscious decision to stay away from sci-fi for a while.

“It’s about finding new things and growing as an actor, and also having different experiences. It’s fun to change things up.”

Ascension marks a return to her sci-fi origins. She’s once again part of an ensemble cast, after playing the lead in Killer Women.

“It’s not necessarily about screen time. It’s about what you’re doing when you’re on screen.”

Any qualms Helfer may have had about Ascension were settled when she read the script and discussed her character’s direction with Levens and the program’s other producers. It was the first time since Battlestar Galactica, Helfer said, that she had seen science-fiction written at that level of sophistication and quality.

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